Link building continues to be an important activitiy for your Internet Marketing campaigns. Since Google Search Engine was built on the notion of citation (links), algorithm changes in the future will not alter the fundamentals.
1. Link Diversity
Although it is essential to focus on getting links from high PR sites, a website with only links from high PR sites will raise red flags. Google machine learning algorithm considers signals that indicate that you are naturally growing your inbound links. Link acquisition without any link building efforts attracts diverse links for a website. Therefore it is essential to balance your high PR link acquisition with low PR ones. Link Diversity also means that you should try to get links from blogs, directories, social media, badges/prize sponsorship and editorials.
2. Relevance
Link acquisition purely based on Page Rank is a bad strategy. Google thrives on relevance and each algorithm updates is towards developing a search engine that will give highly relevant and contextual results to the user. The first thing that a search engine web spam team would look for in a link profile is for paid links - pointing to and from your website. A website about Fighter planes, suddenly linking to 4-5 Viagra sites will raise suspicion about their link profile. Google hates paid links so it would be wise to “nofollow” paid links that are not relevant to your topic.
3. Anchor Text Diversity
Another hint that you are buying link is the use of same anchor text for all inbound links. For example if you are kite seller and just have partnered with a website relevant to your industry then it is wise to use diverse keywords other than “Kites”. You can use “Types of kites”, “Kites Pricelist” and other variations of “Kites”. The only exceptions were the same Anchor text might be used in inbound links is for your brand name. For example, if your ‘Kites’ are sold under a brand – “KTS” then bloggers or fans of your brand might link to your site using your brand name.
4.Deep Linking
Your home page will naturally acquire lot of inbound links. Therefore it is important to diversify the pages for which you are acquiring links. Focus on pages that are crucial for your brand. It can be a page about your product/services, a contact form or a free webinar page. If you sell Kites and your home page has relevant information about Kites, then Search Engines will assume that you only sell kites. But let us say that you also sell “Lego”, which is not widely mentioned in the home page then you have to get inbound links to pages about Legos. This will give the Search Engine a clear idea about what your brand truly stands for.
5. Avoid Link Farms and Low Quality Directories
Link farms were big in late 90s and Early 2000. They were a group of sites that linked to each other to enhance page rank and game Search Engines. Although Link Farms, like the one seen in Early 2000 are nearly non-existent, variations of this model do exist. You should be very careful with such sites and avoid submitting your links to such sites.
Directories were effective in mid-2000 but the value of most of these directories has diminished. Paid link submission and lack of reviewers for these directories led to low quality sites being featured in the site, which resulted in downgrading of directories as a whole. Still, directories like botw.org and http://dir.yahoo.com/ are effective.
Remember it is not the number of links but the quality and diversity of links that matters.